From instigating a mere Uprising to becoming rulers of their own Empire, Rebelion are the new hot names in the raw hardstyle scene, and their aptly named brand new album shows why.
Rebelion‘s latest release, Empire, features a diverse set of 23 tracks ranging from 155 to 200 BPM, with many various kicks, sounds and melodies – some outright euphoric in nature – and of course their trademark touch of hype and atmosphere. Join me as I break down the album, and analyze its merits and drawbacks. Strap yourself in for a wild ride of emotion and sound as we explore this cavalcade of madness together!
The album’s quality of production is generally acceptable with the collaborations and remixes being the highlights. However, Rebelion solo productions, with a few exceptions, sound poor on headphones and only decent with a proper speaker configuration. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not in terms of clarity – at least not with the mid-range and high frequencies – Rebelion has improved a lot in that regard since Uprising. It’s rather the mixdown and mastering of the kicks; some sound muddied and others sound like they have zero bass in them.
The album is available as hardcopy on Gearbox Digital and digital download on Hardstyle.com, with the digital download only containing the original mixes, as the continuous mix is a CD and Spotify exclusive. These tracks cost you €9.95 or €16.95 depending on whether you prefer MP3 or .WAV for listening.
The CD copy isn’t exactly cheap, running €20, although you do get all the full tracks on one disc and a full mix on the other. However, the price of shipping by the delivery company runs around an astronomical €36 to ship to anywhere further than two countries away from the Netherlands. This is because for some odd reason the ‘global tier’ of shipping starts at that point. Getting the CD is only worth it if you are a resident of the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium or the UK or alternatively, have someone you know live there and have it sent to their address, then forwarded to you through the considerably cheaper postal services.
Empire features artwork that is simple, not too cluttered, and represents what it needs to, but there was a lot of lost potential and it was ultimately disappointing. The teaser video for Empire that Rebelion released last year hyped my expectations with its intricate design, but the final artwork felt off. With all of that in mind, listen to the album below and let’s take a look at the album track by track.
Listen to Rebelion – Empire on Spotify:
Original Mixes
Mix Cuts
“Empire” featuring John Harris is the titular and the flagship track of the album.
“Empire” is Rebelion’s single best-produced solo track to date both on the album and historically. Now you may ask yourself what in the ever-loving heavens the voice of Halos and Loud is doing on a track by two Scottish blokes doing some of the roughest hardstyle in the world? Well, John Harris isn’t exactly new to raw; in fact, he already collaborated with a different Scottish lad, Caine, on his track “No Mercy“.
“Empire” begins with suppressed synths playing the melody and soon transitions into a buildup with John’s vocals and the distorted noises. In typical Rebelion fashion, the buildup is exaggerated and greatly drawn out for even more hype effect but it all pays off when the monumental mid-intro drops. Piercing, hard, and thick kicks fill the air with a barebones structure only consisting of kick and kickrolls with the occasional screech thrown in.
Once the break rolls around, we get to hear the melody in all its glory and John Harris’ atmospheric vocals. Seriously, this melody is amazing and it’s one of Rebelion’s best if not the definite best they have ever done. However, the break only gives us but a moment’s respite before madness sets in again, as the break turns into a buildup and then explodes into a phenomenal climax that is seriously well produced for their standards.
Many people criticize Rebelion for having messed up mix and master in their climaxes resulting in either muddy sound or powerless kicks, but they’ve managed to find a balance here that works well. The ending outro is basically a mirror of the mid-intro but it still carries enough energy on its own to not be wasted for simply mixing purposes. The kickrolls are downright lethal and the kickswitch in the latter half of it is just nasty.
“Another Day” is the token ‘motivational’ track on the album with a fantastic melody.
Lately, there have been so many albums with a token track using Les Brown speeches or other motivational speakers as their basis. “Another Day” breaks that convention by using song rather than speech but still to the same effect.
The track bangs and the lyrics are more meaningful than just sampling the same old rap songs over and over again. The melody is the standout part of this track, so much so that this track has no mid-intro at all. This melody then dominates the climax like nothing else.
Enter the second buildup and we get a different version of the melody to go along with a second climax designed to shatter the first and eclipse it in terms of memorability. The same kick returns, but the melody gets transformed into a long screech that follows the general chord progression of the original melody to make for something special, even with its simplicity. Godlike melody and two fantastic climaxes make this track one of the more easily accessible ones on the album.
“Bring It On” with Sub Sonik & LXCPR samples the early 2000s trance classic “As The Rush Comes” by Motorcycle.
“Bring It On” is destined to be the most successful track, much like “Within Me” was from Uprising, simply because of Sub Sonik’s popularity compared to Rebelion – and the track is very much accessible towards a wider audience. With the lyrics and the female vocals being sampled, the rest complemented by LXCPR with some artistic freedom in terms of lyrics and the melody is a free interpretation of that of the original. It’s sampling done right.
The kick stays consistent throughout, which is a perfect fusion of Rebelion’s and Sub Sonik’s sound. The atmospheric buildup technique of Rebelion using Sub Sonik’s sounds fits like a glove and brings us to the climax, which is breathtaking. The piercing and shrieking melody still retains an odd grace to it while the hard kicks hammer in on your eardrums. The final anti-climax is packed up neatly and tidily into one awesome package of energy, atmosphere, and emotion.
“BTTF” features retro wave synths giving some much-needed character to an otherwise rather uninspiring track.
“BTTF” is a nod to Back to the Future and it plays a large part in the sound design of the breaks. The track features America’s favorite conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, spitting some nonsense as usual, but the aggressive nature of the delivery makes it a perfect fit for the track.
The kicks are strange, too, and is very experimental in nature. For a lack of a better word, I’ve tentatively called them “membrane” kicks, making it feel like the tails of the kicks are shortened significantly to sound like a punch. And instead of resonance, that buzz you would normally get from the tail, there is a constant pitch when the kicks drop. You feel them and you know they are there, but they never hit you directly.
The synth is so memorable and funky that it lifts the track from mediocrity, however, the kicks are rather strange. They are highly experimental, but they do need additional work.
The Rebelion remix of “Dark Universe” keeps the original’s best parts, but adds their big, bouncy, and heavy kicks to make it more intense.
“Dark Universe” by Adaro and Rob Gee is one of Adaro’s most famous and revered tracks. Rob Gee’s lunatic delivery and Adaro’s crazy melody are what made that track special and the – true to its name – dark atmosphere. Rebelion’s remix of it succeeds because they kept the best parts.
They slightly altered these elements to fit the rest of the track more, but they kept what made the original great intact and added their own filling to it in the form of big, bouncy, and heavy kicks. After which a complete restructure of the track followed, building around these core elements to make it snappier and more intense. The addition of Bane’s infamous line to start it off was also an ingenious idea. In my opinion, this track is as good a remix as it could possibly be.
The released version E-Force’s remix of “Echoes” improves from its original iteration, but it’s still not enough to be enjoyable.
Before there was “Sempiternal,” there was “Echoes.” It was Rebelion’s masterpiece; their magnum opus. It’s what got them on the Top 100 list of Q-Dance last year – into the top 60 no less. So, when people heard that E-Force made a remix, they were rather skeptical.
The first iteration of this remix was unfiltered: total and utter garbage. The kicks were all right, but they sounded like ripped D-Sturb kicks and the whole constellation of it all just sounded lazy as all hell. It has come a long way since, however, and I found myself to be able to not exactly enjoy it, but rather tolerate it.
The kicks were switched out for something far better and far more characteristic of E-Force. The structure has been changed, too, so it’s not only a carbon copy of the original and the work Edward did on the melody was barely enough to constitute as a remix.
Cryptonite’s remix of “Hardest MF” will make you dance a hundred times harder than the original.
The vocal sample stayed the same, and the general vibe was kept moderately intact for the remix. The melody of the original got replaced with a more Asian-sounding chanting in the break, and the kicks got switched out for the Cryptonite kicks, which are as close to being the end all, be all of hardstyle kicks as a raw kick can be. They are expertly engineered, courtesy of NCRYPTA’s technical prowess, and they are very creative in sound design, courtesy of Luminite’s crazy mind.
All in all, this is a novelty remix, something that was designed to completely obliterate any and all sound systems. I still prefer the original to listen to, but I’d dance to this a hundred times more than I’d do to the original. It nearly gave me a concussion the first time I heard it with my headphones.
“Partystarters” with Killshot is the most underrated track on the album.
“Partystarters” is the dark horse of the album so to speak. The kicks are bombastic, the buildups and the general atmosphere is pure hype. My only gripe is the mix cut removed the climax of the track.
“Lockdown” is a glorious anthem track that attempts to combine tech and ping pong kicks.
“Lockdown” is a pretty dope track. It’s a mashup of Hollywood Undead’s “Young” and a rap track, which serve the atmosphere well. They give the track an anthemic feel, ready to take on the entire world if need be. The mid-intro is a perfect encapsulation of this feeling as it escalates from a standard Rebelion kick into a nut-punching one midway through, and does it sound and feel glorious.
“Lockdown” is Rebelion’s attempt at combining the techy kicks with the ping-pong kicks, and they worked. I can’t wait to be demolished by the track at Defqon.1 this summer. It also has a climax, but it’s mediocrely mixed at best and the kicks feel out-of-place, lacking in power.
“My Mind” is arguably Rebelion’s most euphoric track they ever released.
The kicks they used in “My Mind” are less piercing and rough than their usual stuff, but they are more refined and bass heavy, focusing more on the low-end than the mid-range. The mid-intro is a straight bass-kick escalating into a relentless rampage of midrange, the only kick of its kind on this track because the rest does focus mainly on bass over crunch.
The break is fantastic; the elements come together to create a happy, uplifting but still hype-inducing atmosphere which then concludes with a heavy anti-climax. After the anti is done, the melody picks up again and we are treated with quite possibly the best climax on the entire album. Oddly enough the pitched kicks work perfectly well instead of being either muddy or lacking in power.
“Get Back” with Warface is an awesomely weird, oddball of a track that works for whatever reason.
What do you get when you combine summer feelings + Warface + Rebelion + heavy kicks + awesome melody? “Get Back” is a true banger meant to be played outdoors when the sun is burning hot.
The mid-intro is bass-heavy, using one of Warface’s kicks; the anticlimax is a Rebelion kick and Warface screeches escalating into a kick that feels like a slap to the face, and then there are the chiptune vocals that take you to a magical place far away from reality. Ending in a quite uplifting climax, this one is destined to make you feel better when played at a summer festival.
Rebelion’s remix of “You With Me” improves on the original with better kicks, melody, and vibe.
I can safely say that I enjoy this remix more than I did the original version of “You With Me“. It pretty much improves on the original in almost every conceivable sense. The kicks are better, the melody finally gets a climax, and the whole vibe of the track is just what it feels like it was meant to be from the start.
“Sempiternal” samples Bring Me The Horizon and is the best track of the album by far with its hard, heavy kicks and high energy
Saying that a track is the best track of an album by far is a bold claim, but let me explain what makes this track so great, which elements make it as good as it is.
First of all, it is the choice of lyrics. Taking the “This is Sempiternal!” part of the vocals from Shadow Moses and the rest of the vocals from “Throne” – both insanely popular and memorable Bring Me The Horizon tracks is an excellent start.
Second, you combine that with a melody that’s been basically transcribed from the chord progression of the choir in “Throne” and then put some of the better kicks on the album underneath with probably the best buildup in the entire album and you get “Sempiternal“.
The break features a quote I find noteworthy: “Let me do me, you like it? Cool. Don’t? Fast Forward.” This line here is what I usually try to make my motto in life. After all is said and done the track enters the buildup and finally the climax. Simply saying the climax is good would be an understatement.
The vocals played over it make for an anthemic vibe, perfect for singing or chanting along as the track plays. It’s a shame Rebelion doesn’t play the climax all too often in their sets.
“Underground” with Luminite has tons of power, lots of bass, and bangs with its combined atmosphere.
“Underground” is a track where the mid-intro easily beats both the anti and the climax in terms of sheer power largely in thanks to Luminite’s Macarena Massacre kick, which they decided to reuse here.
The main anti is decent, but it’s only a stubbier and up-pitched version of the mid-intro kick and as a consequence of that, it doesn’t really work as well as the original. The climax, however, is really good, courtesy of Luminite’s and Rebelion’s combined efforts at a melody, synth and kick.
“Beyond Aggression (Rebelion Remix)” features a harder but less characteristic mid-intro than the original.
The original “Beyond Agression“, by Warface and Superior, is an interesting attempt at blending metal and hardstyle, featuring guitar riffs and screaming vocals. The tempo of the track is worth noting, as well, as it is 157 BPM, but because of the rhythm of the riffs, it feels significantly slower. The original’s mid-intro is much better than that of the Rebelion remix while having an absolutely boring main anti.
The remix, on the other hand, features a harder but less characteristic mid-intro than the original. It’s still good, but not as unique as the original. Most of the guitar sounds have been distorted beyond recognition, but they kept the main appeal of the track intact – the lyrics and the melody, which got never fully explored in the original.
The main anti of the remix is much better than the original – much harder and more varied. This is also thanks to the absolutely amazing buildup right before. Rebelion are masters at making a drop sound huge just from its monumental buildup alone.
There is also a climax – conveniently cut from the mix version – that sounds like classic Rebelion, mainly because it was made very soon after their first album (and they hadn’t changed their style as much at that time). It’s a banger of a track; overall, a better track than the original, but I would love for someone to make a mashup of the two using the mid-intro of the original either instead of or with the remix to create a megatrack that shall tear down all walls in front of it.
“Rise Again” gives off a cinematic feeling that will demolish all of your senses.
The track begins with vocals screaming “F*CK YOU, YOUR TIME IS UP!” before the mid-intro drops, and boy, what a mid-intro it is. “Rise Again” switches beats a total of three times with four unique kicks featured in the mid-intro alone.
We enter the break with Michael Caine’s rendition of “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, from the movie Interstellar. This adds the cinematic and epic feel to the track and the ever-growing repetition of “RAGE” as the buildup goes on is chilling and powerful. It gets you on the edge and makes you anticipate the blasting main anti.
The screeches and the kicks demolish all your senses; it is an onslaught of sound. The last anti of the track drops using the blunt kicks from the mid-intro again for a textbook example of a minimalist anti to close it all off in style.
“The TSAR” is the follow-up to “A-Bomb” and it’s much cleaner, bigger, and harder, and it sounds much more epic.
“The TSAR” has an upgraded melody over its predecessor’s 2bit melody. Made for and premiered at Qapital 2017, this auditory weapon of mass destruction shows its age. It still has the “old” Rebelion kicks and also sounds significantly less professional than most tracks on the album. Sadly, the mix cut version again lacks the climax.
Rebelion salvaged what they could from the epic breaks of “Rawness” and created a far superior remix.
The original “Rawness” had one epic element to it – its saving grace – which was the break. The screeches in that were unholy and just had this absolutely filthy, sinister atmosphere to them. But when the drops came along, you just heard the same old, same old.
In comes the remix to save the day! The kicks are better, and the break is this trap infused version of the original, which gives it a nice flavor and the buildup is, in true Rebelion fashion, just absolutely insane.
Lasting a mind-boggling 50 seconds, foregoing a typical “break,” the buildup just rises and rises in tension and volume only to burst into one of the most “fun” type of kicks by Rebelion. Tough as nails and bouncy in nature it has this amazing vibe with it that I can’t quite put together.
The spiritual successor to both The TSAR and Uprising, “Armageddon” featuring MC Livid was a track originally premiered at Defqon.1.
Epic and anthem-like in nature, “Armageddon” lives up to its name. The main anti is one of the three “big” antis on the album, but the climax is sadly muddy and the mixdown is imperfect. I love the track, but it could’ve been produced much more cleanly.
When I first heard the Delete remix of “Salvation” from HardBass 2018, I wasn’t convinced – but now it’s in my top five of the album.
Delete’s kicks lend themselves so well to the task of remixing “Salvation” it’s insane. Borrowing from the original, the buildup begins with The Dark Knight’s “Some men just want to watch the world burn” vocal sample, going straight into a fakeout and a second part of the buildup to finally have a heavy and hard gated Delete kick drop on our head.
The buildup is a nice replication of Rebelion’s style by Delete and it doesn’t sound disingenuous, which is another reason why it is so great; it all sounds natural. It is unrelenting and brutal. The sheer power of its gated kicks can level skyscrapers.
“Wall of Death” featuring Sovereign King is a metal and hardstyle fusion but is ultimately undermined by messy production.
“Wall of Death” doesn’t have bad kicks, but they are just a complete mess in the mixdown and lose some of their inherent power because they are of the “membrane” kick type. There is almost zero tail and a constant buzzing to replace them.
They are bouncy and have enough power for listening live, but they sound poor on headphones and have zero power there. This Rebelion track is a textbook example of an amazing concept being ruined by a poor mix and master.
If there was ever a person to remix “A-Bomb”, it had to be N-Vitral.
The master of the BOMBSQUAD, one of the gods of hardcore, and Mr. Crispy Bassdrum himself remixed “A-Bomb” and it is far better than it has any right to be. The kicks are better and the melody is “discarded” so as to not make the track laughable. Combined with the tempo of 180 BPM, it just works wonders.
Also, the second anti in the mid-intro features some of the most insane rolling basslines I’ve ever heard. It sounds like a Gatling gun slowed down and combined with the gun of an A-10 Warthog.
Closing off the album in style is the 200BPM terror and rawstyle hybrid called “DRUG$$” with Garra.
Rebelion paired up with eDUB and MBK’s terror alias to create an apocalyptic track called “DRUG$$” that completely and utterly wipes the floor with every collaborative track between hardstyle and hardcore artists in terms of sheer brutality, power, and energy.
The break is another thing worthy of mention as it features an excerpt from the infamous interview of Charlie Sheen where he publicly melts down. This is an utterly insane palette cleanser; the end all be all of every raw set. Do yourself a favor and get this on a subwoofer and crank up the volume.
Empire is an album I was as hyped for. A lot. But did it deliver?
I preordered it the moment I had the chance to do so, and I crafted theories the contents and the implications the future of Rebelion’s career as a whole. And while musically it was pretty much as expected – full of unreleased tracks but mainly stuff from the first half of 2017 and only one re-release… the rest of it wasn’t.
Take the art, for instance, or the production. I expected more, better. I expected them to improve on their mistakes and shed those things that held them back, and while they certainly did trim off some of the negativity of their earlier music, they didn’t manage to improve as much as they probably should have. But they are fine with it and most of their fanbase seems to be, as well.
I’m a bit torn on this. On one hand, I’m mostly fine with how they are. I’m fine with the subpar quality as long as it sounds good live and they keep delivering the hype atmosphere and the unparalleled energy they do. I’m fine with some of their stuff sounding downright bonkers experimental and out of this world if it means they do something unique and different from everyone else.
Perhaps Rebelion’s biggest missed opportunity is not finding another more experienced label, instead, they decided to stay with Gearbox.
They have the popularity and the connections to get accepted to say, End of Line Recordings, for example, but they didn’t make the jump. They could’ve gotten more professional advice on their production skills from Delete or Warface and improved their sound to be the best it can be. They could’ve reached even bigger bookings. They could’ve grown larger than they ever thought they could.
But they chose to stay with Gearbox because they are Gearbox’s flagship act. It’s possible they feel responsible to give back the care the label gave to them when they got accepted back in 2014, even if it might hurt their career in the long run. In a way, I respect their decision, but it is a counterintuitive way of handling one’s career.
Rebelion are hugely popular; they are growing faster than you think and as they grow their music will get scrutinized even harder.
Sadly as is the nature of things, the more “mainstream” folks find their music, the bigger the backlash is against them because it is quite unique. This is because, in general, those people are only listening to Noisecontrollers, Wildstylez, Brennan Heart, and Headhunterz whose music has been produced with decades of experience and as such, sounds like it was straight from Apollo himself.
When listeners get confronted with an up and coming act that is hugely popular but has a subpar production quality, they dismiss it and don’t see the merits of it because it just sounds so harsh and so different. Subsequently, it isn’t appealing to the masses, and its production quality, at least in terms of mixing and mastering, is lower than the average.
This hampers their chance at truly making it big – like headlining events that are bigger than your average club venue or getting accepted by the greater community within hardstyle and not just the niche Gearbox fans. All things considered, I am optimistic about their future and hope for all the best for their career.
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